Learn about life afloat the easy way

Life on a narrowboat can be as peaceful as it is idyllic BUT you need to understand the pros, cons, highs, lows, and day to day logistics in living on England's inland waterways. Let me help you find out all you need to know before you commit to what could be a very expensive mistake.

Important changes to the site login process

Over the last month or so I’ve talked about changes to the site login process. I’m sorry if you found some of the instructions both confusing and contradictory. Logging in to a site should be a straightforward process. it wasn’t, but it is now.

This site is built using WordPress. It’s blogging software that’s pretty easy to manage for a numpty like me, but it has its limitations. I have an ever growing number of users needing access to guides they’ve purchased and access to both the Standard and Gold editions of Narrowbudget. I couldn’t manage the access sucessfully with WordPress so I installed a plugin for WordPress to do this for me. Unfortunately, the plugin has a different log in system to WordPress, but it has to be used to manage product access correctly.

If you have been a site subscriber for some time, you have probably been using the WordPress login below.

Please do not use this login form any more. The only function that it served in the past was to log you in to the forum so that you could make new posts and reply to existing ones, and to access and edit your profile details. Using this form, you would have entered your username and password.

The new form has replaced the WordPress form. You will find the link to it at the top of each left hand column throughout the site. The new form requires you to enter your email address and password. The email that directed you to this page contains your email address and password that you need to use to log in using this form. If you have landed on this page via another route and want to know your login details, please contact me.

The default landing page from the new form is your own home page. There are three sections to your new home page; the welcome message with links to the main part of the site, the forum and Narrowbudget, your affiliate details and your profile details.

Under the welcome message, you will see all the products that you have access to. Unless you have purchased one of the guides or access to Narrowbudget Gold, you will just see one product listed here; “Site Access”. There is a message under this heading which reads, “Sorry, no content found. This could be because no content has been made available to you yet, or because your access to this product has expired.” Don’t worry about this. All it means is that there are no restricted files connected with your ability to log in and log out of the site.

Once you have successfully logged in to the site and reached your home page, if you click on the link to the forum, you should see “logged in as yourusername” in the top left hand corner. This means that you are able to create new forum posts and reply to existing ones. If you see a “Guest” icon and a message asking you to log in to post, you are probable one of the older subscribers who has an existing user name within the WordPress login system. Don’t worry, I just need to manually sync your new login details with your old ones to get the two systems working together. Just let me know so I can fix it for you. It only has to be done once and takes me just a minute or two.

The section beneath product details is Affiliate Details. This section is probably of no interest to you unless you have your own blog or website that’s waterways related and you want to earn some extra money for simply providing a link back from your site to mine. The link in this section has your own personal code embedded in it. It will enable livingonanarrowboat.co.uk to track any visitors from your site and any purchases they make on the site over the following 365 days. You receive a 50% share of those purchases. If you have a site of your own and you want to earn a little more cash from it, please let me know.

The final section is your Profile Details. You can ammend your profile details in this section, change your password and unsubscribe from the emails you receive from me. There’s a tick box at the bottom of this section which allows you to turn off your email subscription. Please note that if you uncheck this box you won’t receive any further regular newsletters.

Each of the newsletters you receive from now on will have a link at the bottom of the email “Manage your subscription”. Clicking this link will take you to your home page where you can unsubscribe if you choose.

It’s taken me a while to get to this stage, but hopefully logging in to the site and finding your way around is more straightforward than it was before but, as ever, if you have any problems, just let me know.

Paul Smith

After six and a half years living on a narrowboat on England's inland waterways, Paul and his wife Cynthia now wander Europe by motorhome during the winter, and on the Dutch and French waterways in the warmer months on their 32' Dutch motor cruiser.